A smile in the dark
(Regarding the Atlanta Appellate Court decision on the Five)
by Celia Hart, August 12, 2005
http://www.walterlippmann.com/ch-08-12-2005.html
A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela
Edited by Walter Lippmann
Honestly, we never expected it. They have submitted us to so much
injustice, the current United States administration has tried so hard
to inflict chronic hopelessness and so much concentrated hatred by
those authorities against the Cuban revolution, that August 9 was a
true miracle for our people.
The first press reports reaching us about our solidarity brothers in
the United States, were unbelievable messages ... the trial had been
revoked ... a new trial was to be held. With this decision ... the
sentences were revoked! It was hard to believe! That moment, if just
for a second, before we returned to common sense, we wanted to
embrace everything around us; kiss our dog; bless the three judges
for having given justice. Perhaps, at that moment, we looked
differently and with a small dose of faith, on the Statue of Liberty.
The document released by the Eleventh Circuit Appellate Court of
Atlanta refers to the revocation of the trial held in Miami. There,
where the Cuban émigrés are kidnapped, through lies and lack of
knowledge, little justice can be given. If it was a dream
we did
not want to wake up.
But it was true. It was as if the legal system, with this news,
wanted to repair those seven years when it seemed that time would be
our enemy. The story of that agony would become known. Decency was
probable!
Now, at least, we can dream. Dream that Gerardo and that beautiful
Adriana could be confident on behalf of a baby that injustice
prevents its fruition; that Rene, in addition to looking into the
immensity of Ivette's eyes could admire the marvelous woman in whom
the daughter Irmita has become, through so much pain. Dream that
Fernando can embrace his delicate wife here in Havana, looking at his
mother with pleasure, a woman who has became a great orator. And
Ramon could watch his daughters in a hot beach and his wife who seems
more innocent than a flower. With Antonio
we could dream of
listening to those airy poems that seem to escape through our
windows, verse by verse, and watch Mirta smile without so much
sadness. We could dream about all of that because of an honest
decision that sparked hope again.
Because it was not only the injustice of sentencing innocents
deprived of looking at the sea; there are collateral injustices like
the one announced by our sister Graciela Ramírez, international
organizer of the International Solidarity Committee for the Cuban
Five. Injustices such as the months of isolation, bad treatment,
geographic separation. They not only had to pay the price for daring
to defend my country from criminal actions, but also made their
families suffer other unwritten sentences; and also all the Cubans
and good persons around the world, with whom we have shared this
pain. This decision seemed to stop, for a second, malevolence in the
Earth.
On the other hand, the Atlanta judges have implicitly decreed in
their resolution that it is practically impossible to try honest
Cubans since this case (with God's help) will establish a legal
precedence. So, then, it is a starting point
just that, only a
starting point.
Of course, we will soon awake from that dream, because it is merely a
smile: good news in the framework of the most obstinate darkness. We
should not believe that the rest is going be along easy street. Of
course, the incoherence of the Mafia cupola of Cuban organizations in
Miami snarls and barks at us and then "will ride on". And it is
strange that the United States government, accusers of our five young
men, has not yet appealed. Oh yes. The bonds of the current
administration with the Cuban-American Mafia and the favors they owe
each other, must keep us vigilant and acutely measure the next legal
or political thrust of the enemy.
It's still not time to open the champagne. Quite the contrary: our
battle now will have to be stronger and more obstinate.
That is what our brilliant lawyers have told us, many who are members
of the defense team. Skillfully they await the new step and wait for
the answer of the prosecution that still has several weeks to decide
what to do.
We don't have time. The truth of the Five should be a campaign for
their immediate release and return to Cuba. In fact, today the United
States should free them. They are technically free but are still in
jail. We must not keep quiet, nor stop sharpening our pencils.
Just like when truth has allies, an opportune communication should be
our battle cry. To say it and repeat it in all languages and in song
and verse, novel and music, passionately shout: The Five should be
released! Because they have been declared innocent; otherwise we must
sue the U.S. government for an act that smells of kidnapping. Now, a
slight thread of truth has begun to unravel and what we must do is to
unravel the skein before the government appeals the decision. These
weeks that the U.S. government has to decide on whether or not to
appeal, we should use to request their return and, above all, to
reveal the intrigues and filth behind their unmerited sentences.
Lastly, I want to share a thought with all of you. But specially with
my comrades, friends and acquaintances or not, of the radical left
wing parties because there are times when I feel that the
internationalist cause of the Cuban Five is not understood. The Five
are not only innocent of the crimes for which they were condemned to
unbelievable sentences. No. These five men are symbols of the
permanent battle of the Cuban revolution that is part of the world
revolution. Those who honestly worry about the perpetuation of this
veteran revolution can observe that we are not fighting today for
prisoners of the attack on the Moncada garrison; we are not going
back in history. The Five are our battle comrades, because they are
fighting the worse enemies of our ideas.
If there were a pestilence of U.S. imperialism, if there is an enemy
of world socialism, it is precisely the Mafia connection of the Cuban
cupola of southern Florida with the Miami administration that not
only commits vandalic acts of sabotage against our innocent people
and where this part of the exile community suffers ideological
terrorism. They intend to install the worst capitalism in the island
with the worst methods of murderers. What they want, with the buddies
in government and all internal allies is to move towards the most
reactionary system possible and in the worse manner. In this case the
ends and the means walk hand in hand.
Our five comrades are not only innocent or brave or honest; they are
above any other consideration, internationalist revolutionaries
kidnapped at the time of writing this, by the greatest enemy that
world history has faced.